Acccording to Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO of UIDAI, had something like Aadhaar been in place during Bollywood's 'Mele mein bichde do bhai’ days, the brothers would have been reunited way before they did in the movies!

There was a time when the typical Bollywood genre of ‘Mele mein bichde do bhai’ (siblings separated in a fair), ending with the brothers reuniting in the climax after the baddies are thoroughly beaten up, ruled the roost. More recently, Munnabhai, the lovable, small-time dada in a Mumbai chawl, an impostor claiming to have none less than an MBBS degree, gets away brazenly, much to the delight of the movie-going audiences! However, what should have intrigued the movie producers or the audiences, who lapped up such films, is that none of the script writers conceived something like Aadhaar, the unique identification platform.

Acccording to Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO of UIDAI and Chairman of GSTN, had something like Aadhaar been in place during those days, the brothers would have been reunited way before they did in the movies! And what’s more, Munnabhai’s identity would have been established and he would not have gotten away with his MBBS charade, he said, much to the amusement of the audience at the inaugural session of the two-day National Conference on e-Governance here on Monday.

Kudos from KTR

Pandey’s pitch on the importance of Aadhaar and its uniqueness immediately found an admirer in IT and Industries K T Rama Rao who, in his address as the chief guest at the programme, said: “I have heard many speeches before but I have been impressed by what Mr Pandey said. The passion with which he spoke needs to be complimented. It is exemplary for a bureaucrat to retain that passion.”

Pandey said that in the past seven years, 1.2 billion Indians have been provided with the Aadhaar identity ensuring a nationally accepted identification system. On concerns regarding safety and security of Aadhaar data, Pandey referred to how Lord Krishna speaks in the Bhagavad Gita on the indestructible nature of the soul. He said “Aadhaar is like the soul. It cannot be stolen, cannot be lost, tampered with or destroyed.”

Unique features

It is an identification platform equipped with multi-modal security and the Unique Identification Authority of India takes identity protection seriously, said the CEO of UIDAI.

Aadhaar, Pandey pointed out, had catapulted India from a nation of no identification system to a country with the largest biometric identity system in the world.

Speaking at a session later in the afternoon, Pandey said “Aadhaar is not an ID but a platform. The ID issued is part of the platform. We are in the business of identification and not identity as seen in the name of the Unique Identification Authority of India. It does not say Identity Authority,” he said.

Caution important

If data from the Aadhaar system is being used, the person or persons whose identification details are being shared by the authority, must be informed not just about the sharing but the purpose for which it is being shared. “It is very important to be cautious. Sometimes in enthusiasm, we ignore data privacy and security issues but when we were designing the Aadhaar programme, despite the absence of a data protection law, we presumed that data and privacy protection was like a fundamental right,” he said.

“Identification is a continuous requirement while identity is a one-time event. Aadhaar is a platform of authentication infrastructure and it currently handles four crore identity authentications every day,” he said.